Lectures
8th January 2020: Members' Evening
On Wednesday 6th November 2019 Wye Historical Society welcomed Peter Clark, deputy director of the Canterbury Archaeological Trust, to talk about the Dover Bronze Age Boat. On 28 th September 1992, during construction of a new road on Dover seafront, Keith Parfitt and colleagues found part of a prehistoric boat underneath a timber Roman harbour wall. They were initially given 24 hours to investigate, which turned into just ten days to record and preserve this find of global importance. It was a race against time to excavate the boat, and this was achieved by cutting it into 32 pieces. This enabled it to be preserved quickly and then it took a further ten months to piece it back together again. It first went on display to the public at Dover Museum in 1999.
The boat is made of oak, held together with oak wedges; the sides were stitched together, with no nails or metal used. There are two bottom planks and two at the side with a 'Y' shaped end; the other end of the boat, however, is missing, still in situ outside the permitted excavation area. It’s not known how long the boat originally was, but it’s thought it could have been more than 20 metres. With a date of 1550BC it's one of the oldest seagoing vessels ever found. It had been deposited and purposely broken up when it was abandoned in the Bronze Age. It’s thought that at the end of its life it was deliberately made unusable, as the central rails and stitching holding the upper planks had been cut.
There were many questions to answer about the boat, including how it fitted together without falling apart and what it signified about connections with the continent. It was definitely seagoing as deposits of sand were found inside which were not from Dover. Project researchers from the UK and across Europe came together to research the boat. They decided to build a replica but resources only allowed it to be half-size. Two experts, Richard Darrell, and Ole Crumlin-Pedersen from the Danish Ship Museum, helped to analyse the evidence of how the boat had been constructed, and contemporary tools and techniques were employed. With a five-month deadline, however, the team ran out of time. They managed to have a boat ready on the appointed day to launch in Dover Marina for the waiting media, but it sank; and before they could analyse what had gone wrong the replica became the centrepiece of a French exhibition for the next two years. When they finally got the boat back, they took it apart and put it together again. Original caulking materials were used, such as moss, animal fat, and twisted twigs of yew, and this was sealed with beeswax. Eight people took the boat to Faversham Creek and this time it floated – not only that, it was highly manoeuvrable and stable. The team then took it on a sea journey from Folkestone Harbour to Dover and in 2014 the replica took part in the Great River Race on the Thames.
The original boat would have been twice as long and wide as the replica and weighed around eight tonnes, so enormous resources must have been put into building it. It’s hoped that a joint project with armed forces veterans may lead to a full scale replica in the future. In the meantime the boat is still informing the latest ideas about movement, exchange and identity in Europe during the Bronze Age.
Ellie Morris